A couple days ago, I was looking at an algorithm FAQ for Final Fantasy VI on GameFAQs. Looking at the game's actual damage and hit formulas really reminded me who opaque the game's mechanics are to the player. In many ways, Final Fantasy VI can be very frustrating to play thanks to this lack of transparency, since unless the player does some in-depth research, it can be nearly impossible for the player to accurately predict the outcomes of his decisions.
Let's look at three Relics that can be equipped on a character in order to increase that character's physical attack power: the Hyper Wrist, the Atlas Armlet, and the Gauntlet. The Hyper Wrist boosts a character's Vigor stat, which is one of the attributes that determines attack power. The Atlas Armlet's description says that equipping it will boost the character's Fight damage. And finally, the Gauntlet doubles the Battle Power of the character's equipped weapon by wielding it with both hands. What is not clear at all is how effective these various Relics are in comparison to each other. While the Gauntlet sounds like it should double the damage output of the character equipped with it, the actual increase in damage is significantly less than that. So appraising which of these Relics is the right one to equip on a character is really difficult.
Another area where trouble arises is in determining which stats a character should raise. There are four main stats: Vigor, Speed, Stamina, and Magic Power. However, the game itself is tight-lipped on what each one does. Of these, the only one whose name is self-explanatory is Magic Power (Speed is a distant second). However, since the player can only guess at what each stat does, it is impossible to build stats up intelligently. The player can really only stumble around in the dark. Apparently, based on the FAQs I have read, the stats are not even all equally important. Stamina in particular gives only minor benefits, despite being listed alongside Vigor and Magic Power, which are really important stats. So the lack of info creates major traps that an unassuming player can walk right into.
Another major problem is that the game doesn't really tell the player which stats will affect which abilities or attacks. For example, I am still unsure which stats are important to Sabin's Blitz attacks, even after reading a detailed FAQ. It is unclear whether equipping him with better weapons will improve his damage, whether or not Vigor or Magic Power are used to calculate his Blitz's attack power, or even if it varies based on the individual Blitz. Since Sabin is obviously a big fighter type, and he has naturally high Vigor and low magic Power, it would make sense that Vigor is the pertinent stat and that Magic Power can be safely ignored. However, that common sense conclusion might not be the correct one.
All told, the lack of transparency about the math that Final Fantasy VI is built upon can make it very easy for a player to unintentionally gimp a character, and then leave that player struggling to figure out what went wrong. An RPG needs to be straightforward and clear about what statistics do what, the exact effects of equipment, and which stats abilities are dependent on. It is only with that knowledge can a player make reasonably informed decisions.
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy. Show all posts
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Final Fantasy VI: MP Damage
As my brother mentioned in an earlier post, I have been spending a lot of time lately playing through Final Fantasy VI again (using the Final Fantasy Anthology version). Amazingly enough, I really don't have a lot to say about the game. I have played it so much that I pretty much hold it as the archetypical console RPG, so I find it difficult to actually look at the game critically. However, one element of the game that I don't think I really payed much attention to before has been bugging me.
In Final Fantasy VI, one strategy that is available to the player is to use attacks that damage the enemies' MP, rather than their HP. In many ways this is usually a poor choice, since enemies tend to have very large MP totals and MP damage tends to be very low, so even using unreliable status conditions like Mute, Imp, or Stop would be a better option. However, the designers built into the game a few places where using MP damaging spells like Rasp is just as effective, if not better, than using a more straightforward form of attack, and he most important of these are the enemies who die if their MP total falls to zero.
The most famous enemy in Final Fantasy VI who is vulnerable to MP Damage is probably Atma Weapon, since using Rasp on him is listed as the best strategy in both an old Nintendo Power article and in the Final Fantasy Anthology Bestiary. Of course, why this is the best strategy is never explained, but from my own observations it is related to the fact that he has reasonably low MP and tends to use more powerful attacks as his HP decreases, and does not have an overly large MP total. As such, using the Rasp spell to lower Atma Weapon's MP will result in a battle of reasonable length in which Atma Weapon never uses his strongest attacks. This is actually a great example of building complexities and hidden strategies into a game, so battles don't end up all playing out the same way, but there is one big problem: it is almost impossible to figure out this strategy simply by playing the game. This is partly because the battle AI that controls Atma Weapon is hidden to the player (which is not really a problem, though sometimes making this more transparent helps), but this is largely due to the fact that the player has no way at all of knowing that Atma Weapon will die when his MP falls to zero. Certainly, Atma Weapon mentions at the start of the battle that he is "made of pure energy", but that is about it.
The Atma Weapon example is pretty typical of the strengths and flaws of MP damage in Final Fantasy VI. It is a great strategy for the player to use, but only if you know which enemies to use it on beforehand. This is due to the fact that the "dies when MP = 0" property is limited to only a fraction of the enemies and can not be detected with the games Scan spell. What is more, unlike the way all monsters with the "undead" property (essentially, the "HP restoration becomes damage" property) all tend to have a bony look, ghastly color scheme, or use "Zombie" attacks, monsters with the "dies when MP = 0" property don't have a clear unifying theme. The only real way to tell if an enemy will die when hit by a Rasp attack is to experiment, which means this strategy simply won't come up very often (why experiment to see if Rasp will kill it when a good physical or elemental attack will work just fine?). On the plus side, it was a very good idea to make Rasp such a cheap spell to use, since it means that every time you encounter an enemy vulnerable to MP damage Rasp becomes an inherently better choice than more expensive elemental attack spells.
A lot of problems with this element of the game could have been cleared up simply by adding the "dies when MP = 0" property to the list of things mentioned by the Scan spell, but other solutions exist. For example, in the game Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, every enemy has the "dies when MP = 0" property, and the game has a much wider array of attacks that deal MP damage, so using this particular strategy comes up much more often, is more interesting than casting the same spell over and over, and will work to some extent or another on every enemy. Actually, because MP damage is such an important strategy in Till the End of Time, the issue in that game is more built around imbalances between those characters who have MP damaging moves and those who do not. While that particular solution may not be a perfect fit for Final fantasy VI, it is nonetheless an improvement.
In Final Fantasy VI, one strategy that is available to the player is to use attacks that damage the enemies' MP, rather than their HP. In many ways this is usually a poor choice, since enemies tend to have very large MP totals and MP damage tends to be very low, so even using unreliable status conditions like Mute, Imp, or Stop would be a better option. However, the designers built into the game a few places where using MP damaging spells like Rasp is just as effective, if not better, than using a more straightforward form of attack, and he most important of these are the enemies who die if their MP total falls to zero.
The most famous enemy in Final Fantasy VI who is vulnerable to MP Damage is probably Atma Weapon, since using Rasp on him is listed as the best strategy in both an old Nintendo Power article and in the Final Fantasy Anthology Bestiary. Of course, why this is the best strategy is never explained, but from my own observations it is related to the fact that he has reasonably low MP and tends to use more powerful attacks as his HP decreases, and does not have an overly large MP total. As such, using the Rasp spell to lower Atma Weapon's MP will result in a battle of reasonable length in which Atma Weapon never uses his strongest attacks. This is actually a great example of building complexities and hidden strategies into a game, so battles don't end up all playing out the same way, but there is one big problem: it is almost impossible to figure out this strategy simply by playing the game. This is partly because the battle AI that controls Atma Weapon is hidden to the player (which is not really a problem, though sometimes making this more transparent helps), but this is largely due to the fact that the player has no way at all of knowing that Atma Weapon will die when his MP falls to zero. Certainly, Atma Weapon mentions at the start of the battle that he is "made of pure energy", but that is about it.
The Atma Weapon example is pretty typical of the strengths and flaws of MP damage in Final Fantasy VI. It is a great strategy for the player to use, but only if you know which enemies to use it on beforehand. This is due to the fact that the "dies when MP = 0" property is limited to only a fraction of the enemies and can not be detected with the games Scan spell. What is more, unlike the way all monsters with the "undead" property (essentially, the "HP restoration becomes damage" property) all tend to have a bony look, ghastly color scheme, or use "Zombie" attacks, monsters with the "dies when MP = 0" property don't have a clear unifying theme. The only real way to tell if an enemy will die when hit by a Rasp attack is to experiment, which means this strategy simply won't come up very often (why experiment to see if Rasp will kill it when a good physical or elemental attack will work just fine?). On the plus side, it was a very good idea to make Rasp such a cheap spell to use, since it means that every time you encounter an enemy vulnerable to MP damage Rasp becomes an inherently better choice than more expensive elemental attack spells.
A lot of problems with this element of the game could have been cleared up simply by adding the "dies when MP = 0" property to the list of things mentioned by the Scan spell, but other solutions exist. For example, in the game Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, every enemy has the "dies when MP = 0" property, and the game has a much wider array of attacks that deal MP damage, so using this particular strategy comes up much more often, is more interesting than casting the same spell over and over, and will work to some extent or another on every enemy. Actually, because MP damage is such an important strategy in Till the End of Time, the issue in that game is more built around imbalances between those characters who have MP damaging moves and those who do not. While that particular solution may not be a perfect fit for Final fantasy VI, it is nonetheless an improvement.
Final Fantasy VI: Rages and the Veldt
Gau from Final Fantasy VI is one of the most unique characters in RPG history thanks to his distinctive Rage ability. Instead of making basic attacks, Gau has the ability to enter a berserk-like state and thus emulate the characteristics of almost any monster in the game. If used properly, this ability can make Gau the most versatile and powerful character in the game. However, it seems that most players never discover this. Back when I was first playing FF VI, I rarely used Gau, particularly for major battles and dungeons. This contradiction comes from how user-unfriendly the Rage command is.
The Rage command has two major stumbling blocks that really prevented it from being really accessible: the process of acquiring rages on the Veldt, and being able to choose the correct Rage. First off, Gau could only acquire new Rages by encountering enemies on the Veldt (a place where all seen random monster encounters in the game can occur) and using the Leap command. Unfortunately, this is a very time-consuming and tedious process. Even early in the game, searching for a specific random encounter could take hours of work, and the process becomes even more difficult as the game progresses and the player encounters even more types of monster. While the monsters appear in a loose progression, going through a complete cycle can take an hour or more, and the player may need to go through several cycles in order to encounter the monster he is looking for. So while a dedicated player armed with foreknowledge about the Veldt's workings may be able to track down the best Rages by putting in hours of work, an inexperienced player who has no real clue to how the Veldt works will more than likely become daunted by the task and just give up and write off Gau completely (just as I originally did).
The other problem comes from how hard it is to actually use Rages once they are acquired. While there are 252 available Rages in Final Fantasy 6, the game itself gives no information to the player about what each individual Rage does. The player's only choice is to experiment and see what each Rage does individually. However, while this approach will yield knowledge about the Rage's special ability and automatic status effects in just one or two uses, discovering each Rage's built-in elemental affinities and Status immunities would require the payer to perform lots of dedicated testing (particularly since it is impossible to even get all of that information out of regular enemies). In addition to this lack of information about what Rage does what, the Rages are listed by the game in a single massive list, apparently in a completely random order. So just sorting through the list can take a minute or two.
So, two things need to be done to improve the Rage command so that more people would give a character like Gau a chance: it should be easier to acquire Rages, and it should be easier for the player to know what Rages do and use them in combat. So, here are various thoughts on ways to modify the system to be easier to use, in no particular order:
1) Sub-dividing the Veldt into separate zones, each with their own random encounter chart, would make it easier for the player to perform more focused searches for individual monsters. There could be a a forest section full of forest-type monsters, for example.
2) It might make a lot more sense for each family of monster (all monsters that are recolors of each other) to have a Rage instead of each individual monster. That way, the number of Rages could be cut down significantly, which would make things easier to track and cut down on the amount of overlap between individual Rages.
3) Letting the player look up information on his known Rages would not hurt the game. Heck, letting the player use Scan on Gau to get detailed information (as was possible in some later Final Fantasy games) would have been an improvement.
4) Letting the player manually re-order the Rage list, like is possible for the item list in most FFs and the magic list in FF IV, would have let the player categorize and rank his Rages based on his preferences. It would have been nice to have been able to move more commonly used Rages to the top of the list too.
5) As an alternative to the Veldt, it might not be a bad idea to let the player acquire new Rages anywhere in the world. Perhaps instead of using a command like Leap, the player could kill an enemy using a certain special attack (like Morph or Eat in other FF installments)?
I would love to see a new version of Rage appear in a future Final Fantasy game. Many similar abilities, such as Geomancy and Blue Magic, have improved significantly over the years as they were refined with each new version. It is a bit of a shame that an ability as unique and powerful as Rage hasn't been revisited once yet.
The Rage command has two major stumbling blocks that really prevented it from being really accessible: the process of acquiring rages on the Veldt, and being able to choose the correct Rage. First off, Gau could only acquire new Rages by encountering enemies on the Veldt (a place where all seen random monster encounters in the game can occur) and using the Leap command. Unfortunately, this is a very time-consuming and tedious process. Even early in the game, searching for a specific random encounter could take hours of work, and the process becomes even more difficult as the game progresses and the player encounters even more types of monster. While the monsters appear in a loose progression, going through a complete cycle can take an hour or more, and the player may need to go through several cycles in order to encounter the monster he is looking for. So while a dedicated player armed with foreknowledge about the Veldt's workings may be able to track down the best Rages by putting in hours of work, an inexperienced player who has no real clue to how the Veldt works will more than likely become daunted by the task and just give up and write off Gau completely (just as I originally did).
The other problem comes from how hard it is to actually use Rages once they are acquired. While there are 252 available Rages in Final Fantasy 6, the game itself gives no information to the player about what each individual Rage does. The player's only choice is to experiment and see what each Rage does individually. However, while this approach will yield knowledge about the Rage's special ability and automatic status effects in just one or two uses, discovering each Rage's built-in elemental affinities and Status immunities would require the payer to perform lots of dedicated testing (particularly since it is impossible to even get all of that information out of regular enemies). In addition to this lack of information about what Rage does what, the Rages are listed by the game in a single massive list, apparently in a completely random order. So just sorting through the list can take a minute or two.
So, two things need to be done to improve the Rage command so that more people would give a character like Gau a chance: it should be easier to acquire Rages, and it should be easier for the player to know what Rages do and use them in combat. So, here are various thoughts on ways to modify the system to be easier to use, in no particular order:
1) Sub-dividing the Veldt into separate zones, each with their own random encounter chart, would make it easier for the player to perform more focused searches for individual monsters. There could be a a forest section full of forest-type monsters, for example.
2) It might make a lot more sense for each family of monster (all monsters that are recolors of each other) to have a Rage instead of each individual monster. That way, the number of Rages could be cut down significantly, which would make things easier to track and cut down on the amount of overlap between individual Rages.
3) Letting the player look up information on his known Rages would not hurt the game. Heck, letting the player use Scan on Gau to get detailed information (as was possible in some later Final Fantasy games) would have been an improvement.
4) Letting the player manually re-order the Rage list, like is possible for the item list in most FFs and the magic list in FF IV, would have let the player categorize and rank his Rages based on his preferences. It would have been nice to have been able to move more commonly used Rages to the top of the list too.
5) As an alternative to the Veldt, it might not be a bad idea to let the player acquire new Rages anywhere in the world. Perhaps instead of using a command like Leap, the player could kill an enemy using a certain special attack (like Morph or Eat in other FF installments)?
I would love to see a new version of Rage appear in a future Final Fantasy game. Many similar abilities, such as Geomancy and Blue Magic, have improved significantly over the years as they were refined with each new version. It is a bit of a shame that an ability as unique and powerful as Rage hasn't been revisited once yet.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Final Fantasy VI: Opera Scene
My brother has been playing through Final Fantasy VI (the Playstation FF: Anthology version) recently. He has just played through the Opera scene, one of the most renowned and celebrated sequences in console RPG history. Over the years, many other scenes in other games have been compared to it. In particular, I remember reading reviews of Final Fantasy VIII that compared the Dance scene from that game to the FF VI Opera scene. In my opinion however, there are very few scenes that actually do compare to the Opera scene. Thanks to brilliant directing, the Final Fantasy VI Opera scene is a nearly peerless work of art.
To start with, the Final Fantasy VI Opera sequence was a simply beautiful sequence that took advantage of everything the original SNES hardware had to offer. It had the same gorgeous background and sprite art that was everywhere in Final Fantasy VI taken to a new level with the detailed and animated crowd and band placed alongside a shifting main stage. However, the most extraordinary part of the sequence is its use of sound and music. Back in the days before voice acting was possible, Final Fantasy VI managed to create the illusion that the characters were actually singing by syncing sound effects that emulated the pitch and pacing of the singers' voices to the game text.
Another important part of the success of the Opera scene was how it masterfully wove together several different plot threads into a fluid whole. On one level, the entire thing was a crazy plot concocted by the heroes to meet Setzer, who himself was planning on kidnapping the leading actress. In addition to that, there were the attempts of Ultros (the game's recurring comedic villain) to thwart the whole Opera in order to spite the good guys, a significant amount of development in the romance between two of the central characters, and the poor plight of Impresario, who was simply trying to put on a decent performance and keep his job. This complexity lent a lot of drama to the scene as a whole and cemented it as an important scene in the game.
Just as important as the rest of these elements is the way that the Opera sequence fluidly flowed between cut scenes the player watched and sections where the player had control. When the curtain is raised, the Opera flows automatically, while the characters watch on from their balcony seats. However, the opera itself is pushed into the background while the player takes control over Locke and the focus shifts to the relationship between him and Celes. However, as soon as Celes steps out onto the stage, the game places the success or failure of the Opera in the player's hands. After Celes finishes her big scene, the game flips back and forth between watched cutscenes and player control until the countdown timer to stop Ultros begins, and the whole sequence comes to its climax with a desperate rush to stop Ultros and a dramatic boss battle on the main stage. The entire sequence is a masterful intertwining of big beautiful cut scenes and exciting gameplay, that never gets distracted by unnecessary material.
The reason I don't think that the Final Fantasy VIII dance sequence really compares to the Opera scene is that it is just a straightforward FMV sequence. The isn't any complicated editing or integration of any gameplay elements into it. Furthermore, the scene itself is simply a way to further the Squall-Rinoa romance, with little drama in of itself. However, there is one sequence in the game that does come close to the FF VI Opera scene in FF VIII: the massive battle between Balamb Garden and Galbadia Garden at the end of the second disc. In that sequence, there is a lot of really effective splicing of beautiful FMV clips, intense gameplay, and a well-executed intertwining of various plot threads. The whole thing comes together at its climix when Squall is engaged in a fist-fight minigame with a Galbadia soldier in order to steal a flying craft so he can rescue Rinoa, while dangling mid-air from said flying craft, while an epic FMV battle sequence goes on in the background. I consider the whole sequence the climax of FF VIII.
There are a few more such scenes across the Final Fantasy series; the WEAPON attack on Junon in Final Fantasy VII, and the opening sequence of Final Fantasy IX both incorporate many of the elements that made the FF VI Opera scene so great, and in turn are some of the most memorable sequences in their respective games. So, I think that there are a lot of good lessons to be learned from studying the Opera sequence.
To start with, the Final Fantasy VI Opera sequence was a simply beautiful sequence that took advantage of everything the original SNES hardware had to offer. It had the same gorgeous background and sprite art that was everywhere in Final Fantasy VI taken to a new level with the detailed and animated crowd and band placed alongside a shifting main stage. However, the most extraordinary part of the sequence is its use of sound and music. Back in the days before voice acting was possible, Final Fantasy VI managed to create the illusion that the characters were actually singing by syncing sound effects that emulated the pitch and pacing of the singers' voices to the game text.
Another important part of the success of the Opera scene was how it masterfully wove together several different plot threads into a fluid whole. On one level, the entire thing was a crazy plot concocted by the heroes to meet Setzer, who himself was planning on kidnapping the leading actress. In addition to that, there were the attempts of Ultros (the game's recurring comedic villain) to thwart the whole Opera in order to spite the good guys, a significant amount of development in the romance between two of the central characters, and the poor plight of Impresario, who was simply trying to put on a decent performance and keep his job. This complexity lent a lot of drama to the scene as a whole and cemented it as an important scene in the game.
Just as important as the rest of these elements is the way that the Opera sequence fluidly flowed between cut scenes the player watched and sections where the player had control. When the curtain is raised, the Opera flows automatically, while the characters watch on from their balcony seats. However, the opera itself is pushed into the background while the player takes control over Locke and the focus shifts to the relationship between him and Celes. However, as soon as Celes steps out onto the stage, the game places the success or failure of the Opera in the player's hands. After Celes finishes her big scene, the game flips back and forth between watched cutscenes and player control until the countdown timer to stop Ultros begins, and the whole sequence comes to its climax with a desperate rush to stop Ultros and a dramatic boss battle on the main stage. The entire sequence is a masterful intertwining of big beautiful cut scenes and exciting gameplay, that never gets distracted by unnecessary material.
The reason I don't think that the Final Fantasy VIII dance sequence really compares to the Opera scene is that it is just a straightforward FMV sequence. The isn't any complicated editing or integration of any gameplay elements into it. Furthermore, the scene itself is simply a way to further the Squall-Rinoa romance, with little drama in of itself. However, there is one sequence in the game that does come close to the FF VI Opera scene in FF VIII: the massive battle between Balamb Garden and Galbadia Garden at the end of the second disc. In that sequence, there is a lot of really effective splicing of beautiful FMV clips, intense gameplay, and a well-executed intertwining of various plot threads. The whole thing comes together at its climix when Squall is engaged in a fist-fight minigame with a Galbadia soldier in order to steal a flying craft so he can rescue Rinoa, while dangling mid-air from said flying craft, while an epic FMV battle sequence goes on in the background. I consider the whole sequence the climax of FF VIII.
There are a few more such scenes across the Final Fantasy series; the WEAPON attack on Junon in Final Fantasy VII, and the opening sequence of Final Fantasy IX both incorporate many of the elements that made the FF VI Opera scene so great, and in turn are some of the most memorable sequences in their respective games. So, I think that there are a lot of good lessons to be learned from studying the Opera sequence.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Final Fantasy IV: Counterattacks
One of the most significant gameplay differences between the original versions of Final Fantasy IV and the new DS remake is the radical transformation in how the game's major bosses fight. Scarmiglione, Cagnazzo, Barbaricia, Golbez, and many less significant bosses have so far all been given brand new counterattacks in order to increase the game's difficulty. Many regular enemies have similarly been given new or enhanced counterattacks, to a degree that I have never seen in another RPG. However, the results of this experimentation are actually really good; the addition of counterattacks as a major part of most battles has radically increased the amount of strategy that I have needed in order to win compared to earlier versions of the game, and has made many fights much more dynamic and interesting than they originally were.
Counterattacks are a pretty simple way of making up the gap in the number of actions a boss has compared to a large party of characters. If a boss is limited to making only one action in the time frame where each party member is capable of taking one action, then it is at a significant disadvantage and will be quickly overwhelmed by even simple strategies. This is why many RPGs, such as Final Fantasy 3 or Dragon Quest 8, have bosses capable of making 2 or 3 actions in a single combat round. However, the Active Time Battle System makes it harder to judge how many actions either side is going to make in a certain time-frame, and making multiple actions in a row would look inconsistent under the ATB system. Many later Final Fantasy games got around this by giving bosses multiple parts, each of which could attack independently. However, it would have been too inconsistent with the original game to completely rebuild boss designs to accommodate this method. So, giving bosses lots of counterattacks was a pretty elegant way to overcome the player's number of actions and make fights harder.
The addition of counterattacks has pushed FF IV's dominant strategies in a completely different direction than the original game and even most Final Fantasy games. In most entries in the series, the dominant strategy is a scorched earth approach, where the player continuously pounds on a boss with physical attacks and the party's best magic attacks. The counterattacks in FF IV DS force the player to adopt a much more conservative and defensive strategy instead. For example, Barbaricia counterattacks with an all-character lightning spell whenever she is hit with an attack. If a player was to recklessly attack her with all of his fighters, he would find himself listening to the Game Over music in short order. Instead, it is necessary to focus on defense and healing, so that the party can safely absorb the counterattacks without dying. Other bosses who counterattack with negative status inducing spells similarly force the player to focus his energy on restoring those debilitating status conditions. The fact that FF IV DS has this different dominant strategy is actually really refreshing. It makes the game feel new and exciting instead of the typical Final Fantasy experience.
A particular benefit of having bosses (and regular enemies) use lots of counterattacks is that it makes power storing abilities useful for the first time. In FF IV, Yang has an ability called Focus where he sacrifices a turn to store up his energy so that his next physical attack will do double damage. While this ability has been in not only many Final Fantasy games but other RPGs as well, it has never been useful. Spending an extra turn to do double damage only does as much total damage as making two regular attacks in a row, and performing two regular attacks always has the added advantage of at least doing some damage on the first turn, in case the enemy only has a few hitpoints left. However, the addition of reliable counterattacks makes a single big attack advantageous over several weaker attacks; fewer attacks means fewer opportunities for counterattack. So much to my surprise, Focus went from being a move I never used to an important element of my strategy.
I also need to say that Barrier Shift, a staple of the Final Fantasy series, works much better as a counterattack move than as an actively used power. When Barrier Shift is actively used, it results in two problems: the boss wastes too much time Barrier Shifting to actually fight, and it is so unpredictable that it is likely going to frustrate the player into just ignoring it and focusing on non-elemental attacks. Making Barrier shift a counterattack solves both of those problems. Since the boss doesn't have to spend a turn Barrier Shifting, it will be focused on doing damage throughout the fight. Furthermore, the fact that the boss will only Barrier Shift as a counterattack is predictable enough for a player to actually go to the effort of scanning the boss's weaknesses and exploiting them.
As a final note, one of the best features of the counterattacks seen in Final Fantasy IV DS is that they are always explicitly marked. Every time an enemy uses a power as a counterattack, it is marked Counter: Attack, Counter: Lightning, and so forth. This way, the player knows for certain that an attack is done in reaction to one of his actions, and can plan accordingly. Without this clarity, it is possible that a player could get the mistaken impression that the boss was just doing all of its actions at random, and end up getting frustrated from constantly falling into the enemy's trap. A boss who counters every physical attack is hard enough on its own without forcing the player to figure it's pattern out blindly.
All told, the boss fights I have seen so far in Final Fantasy IV have been really fresh and exciting thanks to the newly added counterattacks. My only complaint is that it might be a little too consistent, since it is fun to beat a boss down with lots of basic attacks now and then after all. I am really curious what the next several bosses in the game will fight like.
Counterattacks are a pretty simple way of making up the gap in the number of actions a boss has compared to a large party of characters. If a boss is limited to making only one action in the time frame where each party member is capable of taking one action, then it is at a significant disadvantage and will be quickly overwhelmed by even simple strategies. This is why many RPGs, such as Final Fantasy 3 or Dragon Quest 8, have bosses capable of making 2 or 3 actions in a single combat round. However, the Active Time Battle System makes it harder to judge how many actions either side is going to make in a certain time-frame, and making multiple actions in a row would look inconsistent under the ATB system. Many later Final Fantasy games got around this by giving bosses multiple parts, each of which could attack independently. However, it would have been too inconsistent with the original game to completely rebuild boss designs to accommodate this method. So, giving bosses lots of counterattacks was a pretty elegant way to overcome the player's number of actions and make fights harder.
The addition of counterattacks has pushed FF IV's dominant strategies in a completely different direction than the original game and even most Final Fantasy games. In most entries in the series, the dominant strategy is a scorched earth approach, where the player continuously pounds on a boss with physical attacks and the party's best magic attacks. The counterattacks in FF IV DS force the player to adopt a much more conservative and defensive strategy instead. For example, Barbaricia counterattacks with an all-character lightning spell whenever she is hit with an attack. If a player was to recklessly attack her with all of his fighters, he would find himself listening to the Game Over music in short order. Instead, it is necessary to focus on defense and healing, so that the party can safely absorb the counterattacks without dying. Other bosses who counterattack with negative status inducing spells similarly force the player to focus his energy on restoring those debilitating status conditions. The fact that FF IV DS has this different dominant strategy is actually really refreshing. It makes the game feel new and exciting instead of the typical Final Fantasy experience.
A particular benefit of having bosses (and regular enemies) use lots of counterattacks is that it makes power storing abilities useful for the first time. In FF IV, Yang has an ability called Focus where he sacrifices a turn to store up his energy so that his next physical attack will do double damage. While this ability has been in not only many Final Fantasy games but other RPGs as well, it has never been useful. Spending an extra turn to do double damage only does as much total damage as making two regular attacks in a row, and performing two regular attacks always has the added advantage of at least doing some damage on the first turn, in case the enemy only has a few hitpoints left. However, the addition of reliable counterattacks makes a single big attack advantageous over several weaker attacks; fewer attacks means fewer opportunities for counterattack. So much to my surprise, Focus went from being a move I never used to an important element of my strategy.
I also need to say that Barrier Shift, a staple of the Final Fantasy series, works much better as a counterattack move than as an actively used power. When Barrier Shift is actively used, it results in two problems: the boss wastes too much time Barrier Shifting to actually fight, and it is so unpredictable that it is likely going to frustrate the player into just ignoring it and focusing on non-elemental attacks. Making Barrier shift a counterattack solves both of those problems. Since the boss doesn't have to spend a turn Barrier Shifting, it will be focused on doing damage throughout the fight. Furthermore, the fact that the boss will only Barrier Shift as a counterattack is predictable enough for a player to actually go to the effort of scanning the boss's weaknesses and exploiting them.
As a final note, one of the best features of the counterattacks seen in Final Fantasy IV DS is that they are always explicitly marked. Every time an enemy uses a power as a counterattack, it is marked Counter: Attack, Counter: Lightning, and so forth. This way, the player knows for certain that an attack is done in reaction to one of his actions, and can plan accordingly. Without this clarity, it is possible that a player could get the mistaken impression that the boss was just doing all of its actions at random, and end up getting frustrated from constantly falling into the enemy's trap. A boss who counters every physical attack is hard enough on its own without forcing the player to figure it's pattern out blindly.
All told, the boss fights I have seen so far in Final Fantasy IV have been really fresh and exciting thanks to the newly added counterattacks. My only complaint is that it might be a little too consistent, since it is fun to beat a boss down with lots of basic attacks now and then after all. I am really curious what the next several bosses in the game will fight like.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Final Fantasy IV DS: Party Based on Plot
Final Fantasy IV used a very unique approach when it came to creating a party of characters for the player to control: party members moved in and out of the party based solely on the demands of the story, rather than through direct player control. While this approach takes some control over the game away from the player, I think it can allow for a game with a much more personal story than is seen in many RPGs.
There are two approaches to RPG party construction that tend to be much more common than FF IV's approach. In the first, as seen in games like Dragon Quest VIII or Wild ARMS 3, the party consists of a handful of characters who join early and are never swapped out. In the second major method, as seen in every Final Fantasy from VI on, the player has a large pool of characters, of which only a fraction can be in the party at a time, but can be freely swapped in and out. The second approach in particular is almost a standard feature of RPGs. However, these approaches force the game developers to write the plot of a game in a particular way, limiting the kind of plots that are possible.
The second approach's main problem can be very visible: the game developers can rarely customize the game's story and events for specific party compositions. No matter which characters are involved in an event, the event will have to resolve the same way. Let's look at Chrono Trigger as an example. Chrono Trigger gave each character in the team custom dialogue for every scene. However, the characters in the game were only playing out generic roles in each scene. For example, after the Ocean Palace, one of the characters in the party takes over a leadership position and asks the local elder some questions. No matter which party member is placed in that role, the same general information is communicated to the player, particularly since the NPC dialogue is inflexible. So even in Chrono Trigger, one of the best games at handling a swappable party in history, can at best offer only minor variations in dialogue and minor additions to scenes based on party composition. In games with larger casts, such as Final Fantasy VI, developers often have to resort to using generic dialogue. In many cases, developers do not even give dialogue to characters who can be swapped out. The result of this overall approach is that it mandates that the story has to be more about the team as a whole than the individual party members.
The set-up where there is a single unchanging party can avoid the problem of generic dialogue and uncustomized scenes, but does require certain plot considerations. Most notably, the entire party typically has to be introduced within the first several areas of the game. Furthermore, once the party is together, it can no longer be separated for any long period of time. A good example is Wild ARMs 4: the first three party members all join in the opening segment of the game, while the fourth joins soon afterwards. Once the four characters are together, the party is only broken up for a couple short scenarios before it reunifies. This actually produces similar results to the previous approach: the stories of the individual members who make up the group are subsumed into the story of the team as a whole, which can potentially limit the growth of individual characters. The game need to put the party together could also result in rather forced introductions in games (in other words: "Why are all of the characters from the same place when the world is so huge?").
The strength of the approach where party members join and leave freely based on plot is that it makes very few demands on writers. The only demand that it does make is that party members join and leave the party under plausible conditions. However, the act of a party member joining or leaving can create a lot of drama in a game. Tellah's confrontation with Edward in Damcyan castle, Leviathan's attack, Palom and Porom's sacrifice, Rydia's dramatic return in the underworld, and so on are all plot points created to justify the appearance or disappearance of a character, but they include most of Final Fantasy IV's most memorable and dramatic scenes. This also puts the focus of the game's plot on the individual stories of the characters. Tellah is a good example: he joins Cecil at first when their paths go the same way, but leaves after his daughter's death to pursue revenge on his own. When Tellah returns to the party, he joins only to get a chance at taking his revenge, which he ends up sacrificing his life for. The entire time Tellah is a part of the story, his tale of loss and revenge is an ever-present undercurrent in the game that is never completely subsumed by Cecil's journey of redemption. The plot-based approach opens up the opportunity for specific characters to introduce their own sub-plots, develop them, and then bow out of the main story when their own plots are resolved, without ever having to pace out their stories based on the flow of the game as a whole.
The biggest weakness of Final Fantasy IV's story-based approach to party membership is that it is not well suited to game mechanics that involve long-term character customization. It would be really disappointing for a player if he sinks hours into carefully building up a character only to watch that character leave after the next plot event. However, the story approach does work well with game systems like FF VII's Materia system or FF VIII's Junction system, which allow the player to customize characters by equipping them with abilities kept in a party-wide pool. I am actually rather surprised that I have never seen a game that combined such a system with plot-based party membership.
I would like to see more games that used Final Fantasy IV's way of doing things. It is a system that has never seen as much use over the years as it deserves.
There are two approaches to RPG party construction that tend to be much more common than FF IV's approach. In the first, as seen in games like Dragon Quest VIII or Wild ARMS 3, the party consists of a handful of characters who join early and are never swapped out. In the second major method, as seen in every Final Fantasy from VI on, the player has a large pool of characters, of which only a fraction can be in the party at a time, but can be freely swapped in and out. The second approach in particular is almost a standard feature of RPGs. However, these approaches force the game developers to write the plot of a game in a particular way, limiting the kind of plots that are possible.
The second approach's main problem can be very visible: the game developers can rarely customize the game's story and events for specific party compositions. No matter which characters are involved in an event, the event will have to resolve the same way. Let's look at Chrono Trigger as an example. Chrono Trigger gave each character in the team custom dialogue for every scene. However, the characters in the game were only playing out generic roles in each scene. For example, after the Ocean Palace, one of the characters in the party takes over a leadership position and asks the local elder some questions. No matter which party member is placed in that role, the same general information is communicated to the player, particularly since the NPC dialogue is inflexible. So even in Chrono Trigger, one of the best games at handling a swappable party in history, can at best offer only minor variations in dialogue and minor additions to scenes based on party composition. In games with larger casts, such as Final Fantasy VI, developers often have to resort to using generic dialogue. In many cases, developers do not even give dialogue to characters who can be swapped out. The result of this overall approach is that it mandates that the story has to be more about the team as a whole than the individual party members.
The set-up where there is a single unchanging party can avoid the problem of generic dialogue and uncustomized scenes, but does require certain plot considerations. Most notably, the entire party typically has to be introduced within the first several areas of the game. Furthermore, once the party is together, it can no longer be separated for any long period of time. A good example is Wild ARMs 4: the first three party members all join in the opening segment of the game, while the fourth joins soon afterwards. Once the four characters are together, the party is only broken up for a couple short scenarios before it reunifies. This actually produces similar results to the previous approach: the stories of the individual members who make up the group are subsumed into the story of the team as a whole, which can potentially limit the growth of individual characters. The game need to put the party together could also result in rather forced introductions in games (in other words: "Why are all of the characters from the same place when the world is so huge?").
The strength of the approach where party members join and leave freely based on plot is that it makes very few demands on writers. The only demand that it does make is that party members join and leave the party under plausible conditions. However, the act of a party member joining or leaving can create a lot of drama in a game. Tellah's confrontation with Edward in Damcyan castle, Leviathan's attack, Palom and Porom's sacrifice, Rydia's dramatic return in the underworld, and so on are all plot points created to justify the appearance or disappearance of a character, but they include most of Final Fantasy IV's most memorable and dramatic scenes. This also puts the focus of the game's plot on the individual stories of the characters. Tellah is a good example: he joins Cecil at first when their paths go the same way, but leaves after his daughter's death to pursue revenge on his own. When Tellah returns to the party, he joins only to get a chance at taking his revenge, which he ends up sacrificing his life for. The entire time Tellah is a part of the story, his tale of loss and revenge is an ever-present undercurrent in the game that is never completely subsumed by Cecil's journey of redemption. The plot-based approach opens up the opportunity for specific characters to introduce their own sub-plots, develop them, and then bow out of the main story when their own plots are resolved, without ever having to pace out their stories based on the flow of the game as a whole.
The biggest weakness of Final Fantasy IV's story-based approach to party membership is that it is not well suited to game mechanics that involve long-term character customization. It would be really disappointing for a player if he sinks hours into carefully building up a character only to watch that character leave after the next plot event. However, the story approach does work well with game systems like FF VII's Materia system or FF VIII's Junction system, which allow the player to customize characters by equipping them with abilities kept in a party-wide pool. I am actually rather surprised that I have never seen a game that combined such a system with plot-based party membership.
I would like to see more games that used Final Fantasy IV's way of doing things. It is a system that has never seen as much use over the years as it deserves.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Final Fantasy IV DS: Music
I purchased the Nintendo DS remake of Final Fantasy IV a few days ago, and have already put a few hours into it. Final Fantasy IV is a game that I have a lot of nostalgia for, which I hinted at in a relatively recent blog post. After only a few hours in to the game though, one of the first big things to jump out at me is FF IV's music. It may be the nostalgia talking, but I still think that Final Fantasy IV has some of the best songs and use of music in RPG history.
The reason I think FInal Fantasy IV's use of music is particularly good has to do with how the game uses music to match the changing mood of a scene. Nowadays, background music is often very subdued, or even completely silent, during important scenes, because most of the dialogue is voiced. Often, the background music is constant throughout most of a scene as well. However, Final Fantasy IV did not have voice-acting in its original release (or even much in the way of written dialogue), and so it often had to rely on music to carry the the emotional aspect of a dramatic scene. A good example is the early scene where King Baron strips Cecil of his rank. During the scene, the castle's background music fades away, and the game becomes completely silent, until the point where the King says that he is stripping away Cecil's command, at which time the game suddenly starts playing a very sad and forlorn song. Because the song starts playing the exact moment that Cecil says his line ("My liege!"), it does an amazing job of emphasizing Cecil's shock and sorrow at that moment, even without a voice-actor to actually say the line. Final Fantasy IV is full of such moments where music is used to impart such emotions into the character's lines.
Another reason that I really like the music from Final Fantasy IV and its SNES contemporaries is because of the simplicity of those old MIDI tunes. In short, the songs from Final Fantasy IV where both emotionally powerful and simple enough to hum. Because I ended up humming those songs, they got stuck in my head for years. Heck, I am humming Cecil's eerily sad theme song to myself right this moment. The melodies of these songs were strong and memorable. Too often, the melodies of such songs in more recent games become buried in too many technical complexities and the impact of the songs are thus lost.
I am really glad that the developers of the FF IV DS remake kept the game's original music and musical timing. The music of FInal Fantasy IV is a big part of my nostalgia for the game, and I would have been able to tell if there had been any changes to it. As it is, the my nostalgia factor for the game maxed out after only hearing some familiar tunes during the opening CG movie. I guess it goes to show that music and sound are vital elements of nostalgia.
The reason I think FInal Fantasy IV's use of music is particularly good has to do with how the game uses music to match the changing mood of a scene. Nowadays, background music is often very subdued, or even completely silent, during important scenes, because most of the dialogue is voiced. Often, the background music is constant throughout most of a scene as well. However, Final Fantasy IV did not have voice-acting in its original release (or even much in the way of written dialogue), and so it often had to rely on music to carry the the emotional aspect of a dramatic scene. A good example is the early scene where King Baron strips Cecil of his rank. During the scene, the castle's background music fades away, and the game becomes completely silent, until the point where the King says that he is stripping away Cecil's command, at which time the game suddenly starts playing a very sad and forlorn song. Because the song starts playing the exact moment that Cecil says his line ("My liege!"), it does an amazing job of emphasizing Cecil's shock and sorrow at that moment, even without a voice-actor to actually say the line. Final Fantasy IV is full of such moments where music is used to impart such emotions into the character's lines.
Another reason that I really like the music from Final Fantasy IV and its SNES contemporaries is because of the simplicity of those old MIDI tunes. In short, the songs from Final Fantasy IV where both emotionally powerful and simple enough to hum. Because I ended up humming those songs, they got stuck in my head for years. Heck, I am humming Cecil's eerily sad theme song to myself right this moment. The melodies of these songs were strong and memorable. Too often, the melodies of such songs in more recent games become buried in too many technical complexities and the impact of the songs are thus lost.
I am really glad that the developers of the FF IV DS remake kept the game's original music and musical timing. The music of FInal Fantasy IV is a big part of my nostalgia for the game, and I would have been able to tell if there had been any changes to it. As it is, the my nostalgia factor for the game maxed out after only hearing some familiar tunes during the opening CG movie. I guess it goes to show that music and sound are vital elements of nostalgia.
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